tempt of every existing social institution which bears the stamp of age, and a defiance of every established mode of thinking and feeling; their religious peculiarities are marked by a sneering indifference to all Christian persuasions alike; by a general levity of feeling on the subject of religion, and especially by dislike of the ecclesiastical constitution of their country. The trammels of Gospel faith and discipline were intended, they seem to imagine, for a much lower scale in the progress of intellectual refinement than their own; and must not be allowed to encumber such highly favoured souls as theirs in their spiritual aspirations after immortality. They alternately laugh at and calumniate those benighted countrymen, who are blindly plodding the old beaten paths of Christian morality and patriotism; whilst soaring on the wings of a spirit disembodied from these antiquated prejudices, they kindly scatter among us poor wandering mortals the rays of heavenly light in which they live, and confidently summon us to our regeneration. They have transferred, moreover, the worship, which they owe to their Maker to their own ideal forms of liberty and reason, before whose altars they prattle their frequent services of blasphemy, treason, and absurdity, offer ing up incense loaded with noxious infection. The great sentimental apostle of liberty, Rousseau, disliked Christianity, because "Il ne preche," (he said) que servitude et dépendance." So, my Lord, doubtless it is with these our own free-thinking reformers. Their taste and superior mind will not allow them to venerate and support that holy system, which would drag their obscene idol from her throne, strip her of her meretricious adornments, and which, in its true spirit, gives mankind the freedom of Christian allegiance; a freedom at once manly, honourable, rational, secure equally from the power of doing, and the meanness of servilely suffering wrong. But, in fact, they cannot appreciate this natural state of us old-fashioned Englishmen. They cannot see how we can be at the same time jealous and proud of our religious faith, attached to our constitutional Government, determined in constancy, and fond to admiration of genuine English liberty, both religious and civil.

These men, my Lord, of whom we are now speaking, are the literary pioneers of reform, who endeavour to obtain an influence in the cause by their affectation of superior intellect and refinement of prescience. But they and their humble coadjutors are linked together by that kindred principle, on which we are now dwelling as the blackest feature of modern disaffection. We believe, that the influence of this metropolitan school of literature and politics may become alarmingly extensive, and, with its extension we are sure, that the springs of future change of every kind must become charged with poison. In the well-known noble Poet who is the great Coryphæus of this band (if in his immeasurable superiority over his class, he will not disdain the title,) we firmly believe that the genius of evil has triumphantly taken possession of a most highly-gifted nature, and perverted it into the will and the capacity to perpetrate the foulest mischief, But our present aim is, not to particularize the blots of individual public character, but to obtain, from the conduct of its principal associates and agents, the real nature of modern political regeneration. Let us proceed then, and we shall find the picture consistent in its colouring throughout.

No man, my Lord, can have attended farther than we have described to the symptoms of po pular effervescence around him, without remarking also the unceasing efforts of the leading agitators to ob literate the old and honourable feeling of loyalty to the King from the breasts of his people. Every vile passion, and every assailable weakness of the multitude, are flattered and appealed to for this most unworthy purpose. Calumny and ridicule, black and exaggerated in their kinds, are by turns employed; and thus attempts are made, the most base, unmanly and degrading to the national character, to bring the person and office of Majesty into contempt. The very refuse of society, they who are designed to be its reformers, and to appoint its future Legislators, are in this manner taught, as a fit preparation for their future high destiny, to make a mockery and a bye-word of the highest human authority, and to trample under foot all its hitherto respected associations.

This is a theme, my Lord, on which a right-minded Englishman cannot enlarge without unmingled disgust. The feeling of loyalty congenial to his bosom, is, as your Lordship well knows, in its comprehensive and true import, a compound of the noblest social virtues. It is intimately allied to honour both in sentiment and action; it is the natural product of an honest nature, and of a rightly cultivated mind; it is the brightest ornament of all civil allegiance amongst us; the silken cord which binds in harmony the necessary subordinations of the land to its constituted fountain of authority and honour. We repeat then, my Lord, that the outrages, the vilest and lowest which the prostitution of the art of printing and caricature can invent, now daily perpetrated against this noble feeling, are disgusting in the extreme. But still more, the extent to which they are tolerated and encouraged, is most alarming and portentously characteristic of malignant political disease. It bespeaks, as far as it proceeds, a degeneracy of heart and feeling, from which no social good ever has sprung, or ever can spring in a nation; it betrays a brutal and jacobinical obduracy of nature, to which all the decorum, all the humanity, all the charities of civilized refinement are strangers; it smells strongly of anarchy, violence, and blood. The Nobles and the Hierarchy are almost equally the sharers of these abominable revilings; and they are so, because the constitutional bodies, of which they are the heads, are generally true to their duties and their country, and because they form essential parts of that admirably constructed edifice, whose demolition, not whose reformation, is aimed at. In short, my Lord, every manifestation of the mind, which dictates these proceedings, is marked by a striking uniformity of evil character, by palpable analogy to all former modern revolutionary preparations, by a persevering attempt to decompose the existing fabric of our social organi

zation.

Your Lordship can easily recal to mind scenes of national misery the most revolting, to the enormities of which the hear's of men had been previously reconciled by a similar process of demoralization. To these, my Lord, are to be added other almost equally formidable features of the reforming mania. Un

ceasing efforts are made to persuade the people, that the wisest and most eminent Statesmen of all parties amongst us are equally unworthy of confidence, and that no change controuled at all by moderation, or effected with caution, can be remediable of the fancied grievances and sufferings of the nation. The agitators indeed, whose object it is to strengthen and direct the popular torrent, know well that their hopes are baseless, as long as men of rank, and wealth, and honour, and cultivated talent, whether Whig or Tory, hold the reins of government; and they know also equally well, that the judicious removal of that partial rust, and of those partially accumulated obstructions, which, at present, a little deform and impede the excellent machinery of our Constitution, would, at once, by depriving them of every specious pretext for clamour, entirely unnerve their power of mischief. Under these convictions, then, it is, that the violent and more determined among them eagerly seize every opportunity which offers, to vent calumnies against all honourably-conspicuous public characters, and all the virtuous advocates of moderate and peaceable ameliorations. Does a Whig Senator ever mix with their assem blies, and incautiously appear to sympathize in their feelings? the presumptuous participation of honour is immediately interdicted, the unworthy alliance disclaimed, and the unholy brotherhood shunned as a contamination. They will not suffer, for a moment, even the least tainted part of the waters of the great pool of corruption to mix with the pure current of their reform. They will roll onwards in their impetuous course towards the great ocean of perfect liberty, indebted only for their future boundless enjoyments, to the impetus of their own deep and unsullied tide. Is any opinion ever expressed by the calm-thinking and disinterested Statesman in favour of any measure of real amendment, and which will, in any degree, tend to mitigate public distress, or to pacify popular clamour? the alarming restorative is immediately depreciated by every art of disappointed virulence; the mild and easy relief of the State patient is opposed, because it would entirely supersede those insidious prescriptions, which are intended to vitiate and protract the disease, and promote the employment

and emolument of the impostor. He knows full well, that every successive remedy of this kind, administered by the wise and patriotic practitioner, hurries on the arrival of that sad and hateful time, when his more profitable and more pretending "occupation's gone." These characteristic features of popular reform, my Lord, you will doubtless admit, speak a language decisive enough for the most fiberal and tolerant politician. They cannot, indeed, for a moment, be mistaken. They are indications of a state of feeling dark, ungovernable, and destructive. They point, with unerring clearness, to what your Lordship, as well as ourselves, would shudder to contemplate, as at all likely to befal our country, to the unmitigated wrong and wretchedness of rufnan popular violence, to licentious and barbarous democracy.

But there is unfortunately a very generally prevailing delusion abroad, infected with the spirit of the times, which most mischievously encourages, these zealous destroyers, and casts additional suspicion and danger, at the present crisis, over the experiments of political Reform. The world seems to be impressed strongly with a notion, that some irresistible process of thought and feeling is now going on in the minds of men, which will impel them, in spite of all interested opposition, speedily to subvert, or at least to remodel extensively, the present fabric of society. The general consequence of this conviction, not only on the Continent but in this Country, is a certain passive and predestinarian looking for of some great changes, which, under the almost especial appointment of Providence, are supposed to be awaiting the nations. Under this persuasion, shallow and silly, and groundless, in the very absurd extent to which it is carried, the resisting energies of thousands of good men are at present paralized, and themselves delivered over, the timid and hopeless victims of bold and designing turbulence. They interpret every accidental popular commotion into a warning symptom of the approaching storm, every little political effervescence into one of its necessary agencies; and thus, they themselves, by encouraging the belief of its certain approach, assist really in promoting evils, which, otherwise, would be near only, (notwithstanding the unusually

restless temper of the times,) in the wicked anticipations of persevering and disorganizing enthusiasm. The truth, my Lord, is, that the revolutionary flood which, for so many late years, desolated Europe, has left behind it, (as we have already observed when speaking of the original impulse) an impure and noxiously fertile sediment, out of which have sprung a certain set of restless, noisy, and intriguing spirits, whose fit and favourite occupation is, to disturb re-established harmony. Though they may not be generally so weak in numbers as could be wished, yet their principal strength undoubtedly consists in the activity and ubiquity of their zeal, in their power to frighten the nation into political misgivings, forebodings and fears. They assume to themselves, in the plenitude of their self-conceit, an immeasurable superiority over the old persons and things of the world, and stigmatize indiscriminately as knaves or drivellers, all who prefer the accumulated wisdom of past ages, to the wild freaks of their consuming illumination. By means of a large portion of the public Press, on which the incubus of their evil influence has now obtained a hold, they are constantly reiterating these pernicious follies upon the popular mind, and with dauntless confidence, foretelling incessantly the consummation of their own guilty wishes. Thus it happens, that every needy and disaffected newspaper scribbler is now triumphantly proclaiming the speedy and certain arrival of this political millenium, and insulting and beating down, with disgusting effrontery, every calmer recommendation of benevo lence and sober patriotism. The entire experience of the past is scorned by these ignorant and arrogant sciolists, whilst the birth of Radicalism in England, and of Carbonarism on the Continent, was, in their estimation, the happy dawn of a day of brilliancy and beauty, which is destined to expose completely the deformity of every thing hitherto deemed sacred and wisely-fashioned in society. And this my Lord, is the irresistible spirit of the times, of which we hear so much; this, in truth, the mere clamour of the conceited fanatic, and the needy demagogue. Shame indeed on a generally and justly denominated enlightened and religious age, if it were so ; if base preachers of universal rebellion

had really power enough to take possession of, and convert to their own use all its energies. But it is not so ; the fascinations of the serpent will be powerless, if met by the steady gaze of manly political virtue. The banner of social revolt, however gilded with false promises, and emblazoned with novel attractions, will assuredly be left desolate, if wisdom and benevolence unite with firmness to oppose its progress, to rally the true friends of order and peace, and to improve, wheresoever practicable, the common happiness of society. But this general persuasion of coming evil, this intimidation of the better part of mankind, serves again powerfully to recommend caution in all present political changes, and strikingly marks the character and danger of that Reform which is now most clamorously demanded, and which we have been endeavouring, in this letter, however feebly, to expose.

We have now, my Lord, finished our task for the present, having it may be, dwelt too minutely upon conclusions obviously arising from facts within reach of every one's observation. But, notwithstanding this palpably apparent revolutionary character of Popular Reform, there are, doubtless, very many persons, who are either blind enough, in a too confident security, to overlook it altogether; or insensible enough of its impetuous and headstrong tendencies, to favour it, to a certain extent, for the furtherance of factious, or more wildly reforming views; and it is, therefore, for the serious consideration of such individuals especially, that we have prepared this letter to your Lordship.

In the next number of our GUARDIAN, we shall conclude our view of the general subject, by endeavouring to point out how far the present prevailing clamour for political change may, in our opinion, be advantageously gratified; and, more particularly, by developing the true nature of National Reform, in its various practical and most interesting bearings. We cannot help

thinking, indeed, that the most important and most beneficial duties of every member of the state, as a sincere Reformer, are wretchedly misunderstood in general, and that consequently social improvement amongst us may possibly be retrograding, whilst we are vainly fancying it to be, through our instrumentality, progressive. But, my Lord, in the mean time, the immediate present path of duty of all men of your station, at this most pregnant crisis, lies clearly open before you. Viewing the peculiar aspect and dangers of the times with the eye of disinterested patriotism alone, your first care will be directed to the permanent preservation of the Constitution entire, of which you are the hereditary or chosen defenders. In this great cause, under present circumstances, the voice of faction should be dumb; and a manly union of defensive sentiment among all parties, however opposed in opinion upon minor questions of policy, should destroy, at once, the wretched hopes of those, who expect to see the lofty citadel reduced through the degeneracy, strife, and defection of its garrison. No man, my Lord, is of a spirit more capable of this elevation than yourself, more disposed also, we may add, to do your duty firmly "inter abruptam contumaciam, et deforme obsequium," those two loathsome symptoms of inveterate faction. When you shall have thus secured the foundations of the Constitutional fabric, by rendering all attacks upon them hopeless, then, but not till then, you may proceed in earnest, amidst the salutary ferment, and, it may be, the vehement sallies of clashing intellect, to repair its decays, and remove from its various members the accumulated stains of time; and trust our words, my Lord, the country will, with difficulty, be brought to believe, that genuine Whigs, whose ancestors in principle founded our national liberties and happiness can, for a moment, ever knowingly co-operate in schemes tending to their destruction. Respectfully yours, &c.

Å GUARDIAN.